Flatline wrote on Dec 12, 2014, 11:45:If you'd argue that at times GTA5 can be sexist, then I'd agree with you, you'd get no argument from me. In fact, in a crime/lowlife simulator there is almost certainly going to be a negative light cast on many women. But I wouldn't immediately say "Oh the designers hate women and this game promotes hating women".

okay, so perhaps i'm not as learn'ed as some who carry around a pocket OED but to me the definition of "sexism" should not inherently concern only one sex (just as racism and prejudice are also concerned, no race or sex is implied with these word).

I'm almost through the GTA V campaign, and i gotta say, as far as a "negative light being cast", i'd say that men take the center stage. well, psychopaths take the center stage, who happen to all be men.

So how exactly is GTA sexist? because there are occasionally women in it? i'm not trying to sound cute, i genuinely do not understand how this works, or the rules going on here.

Couple of things. The story with Lazlo/Michael's daughter was pretty sexist. You could argue that was the point of the character/story and I'd agree with you, but it's still sexist.

Being able to rub your hands on a stripper for 2 minutes and having her jump in the sack and date you is pretty sexist.

It's been like a year since I played the game so some details are fuzzy in my head. But they do exist.

Now as for Beamer suggesting that video games make society sexist, that's kind of bullshit and historically ignorant (It's also identical to the murder simulator BS Jack Thompson was famous for, just replace "murder" with "hates women" and you're done). There's been sexism for probably as long as there's been civilization. I think it's a better argument to suggest that sexism you see in media/video games arises as a reflection of our culture rather than a shaping force of it.

Also, Polygon is full of shit. I know this is an opinion piece, but let's start at home with criticism.

Polygon's review of GTA5 was a 9.5 out of 10. They fucking *loved* the game. But now it's trendy to be part of the internet rage machine.

Why not start with why your own publication loved the fucking game when it came out a year or more ago if you're going to shame society for liking a game that your own bosses told everyone to play?

InBlack wrote on Dec 12, 2014, 09:18:Why isnt anyone actively pursuing a sequel to "Freespace2"? With the recent resurgence of interest in space games in general, especially space flight sims, and with everyone concentrating of open world games, or MMOs (CR gimme Foundry42 and the rest be dammned goddamnit) I would be eager to see Volition going back to their roots and doing one. Who owns the licence for this IP?

The IP wouldn't even matter. Freespace had the most generic "Aliens come to attack duuuurrrrr!" storyline ever. You could easily make a new story in ~ 10 minutes.

Freespace 2 sold terribly, however. Just awfully. So everyone decided there was no interest in games like that.

Star Citizen and E:D should probably prove that wrong, but otoh, would there be that much demand for Freespace 2 right now, as we're in the midst of a space game renaissance?

FS2 is a completely different flight engine and experience compared to current space sim games. Freespace 2's flight model was more traditional/xwing-ish to start with (and SC was supposed to be *grumble*) while the combat was based off of WW2 pacific theater combat with large cap ships and AA flak and dozens of fighters swarming around in the chaos.

If you go download the updated engine files for the open sourced FS2 and play the game again, the actual game mechanics and game experience still hold up extremely well (except for the shitty nebula missions nobody liked those).

Beamer wrote on Dec 12, 2014, 12:07:Misogyny isn't simply actively, openly hating wome. The OED defines it as hatred, dislike or prejudice. So all sexism against women is misogyny, because it's prejudice.

Funny, OED doesn't consider misogyny as a synonym with sexism. In fact, OED doesn't *have* a synonym for misogyny.

Board games generally do better at kickstarter than video games, but that being said I'm very reluctant to suggest backing this game.

1. FFG will pursue them if it's too close to X-wing. And it seems basically like x-wing.

2. Only CG renders of... well.. just about anything. They have two 3dprinted "prototype" models that look about as low-res as you can imagine. I could push those out for like 10 bucks on shapeways. Probably using original FS2 meshes.

3. Shitty artwork. Sure it's too early to have final art, but there's like no graphical design at work here.

What I want to know is since when did all sexism suddenly become misogyny?

If you'd argue that at times GTA5 can be sexist, then I'd agree with you, you'd get no argument from me. In fact, in a crime/lowlife simulator there is almost certainly going to be a negative light cast on many women. But I wouldn't immediately say "Oh the designers hate women and this game promotes hating women".

Yeah I heard about that. It's been known since the early launch last week. Pretty bad.

Which sucks. I just jumped back in after being gone since the original subscription and was sort of enjoying myself. I'll still play through the free stuff, and may sub for a month to get the hutt cartel thing, but yeah... crappy.

Darks wrote on Dec 8, 2014, 20:40:Taking a guess at this, but I get the feeling they are delaying because they saw DAI and saw some things that peeked their interest and feel that now they need to make some changes to make their game better.

Nah. They're pushing this game from 3 months out to 6 months out. They should be largely feature locked.

Plus, it's their MO to release a director's edition/uber patch that introduces stuff like that a year after the game ships.

bobbyric wrote on Dec 5, 2014, 13:13:D&D franchise would just be a nightmare (why do you figure Bioware stopped working with wizards of the coast)

Yeah I wish someone in the "know" would talk about the why and how concerning this... is there any known reason why absolutely NO DEV AT ALL touches DnD 4.0 rulesets for games ?

Because WotC are beyond fucking terrible to work with.

This. They also are quite literally not sure how to approach the concept of computers and the net.

Remember when 4th ed came out and they initially promised a gargantuan suite of apps? Remember when all we got was a rather robust player character editor? And remember how as time went on that got nerfed into something that was barely useable, and you had to subscribe to use it?

They're doing it again with 5th edition. Originally they were going to have this gargantuan software suite called Dungeonscape. They recently shit-canned it because it was more ambitious than 5th ed was in totality.

Beamer wrote on Dec 3, 2014, 10:52:Yes, the mission with stalking the celebrity is really gross, easily the worst part of a game with an already awful plot, but that's the only thing particularly bad that I remember.

Seriously that's the only "bad" thing you remember? Paparrazzi/stalking is worse than the mission that you torture the fuck out of someone?

Fion wrote on Dec 2, 2014, 23:40:Not all AS games suck or are bad ports. Sure most of the better ones are older, when they had one dev group working on each game instead of spreading it so thin and giving so little time to each group to each game. AS2 & Brotherhood stand out. Black Flag is quite fun but also extremely formulaic but it's sea-faring niche makes it worth the sale price.

I'm hoping it doesn't suck because Victorian England sounds like a fun place to assassinate bad-guys in.

Spot on. I thought the first Ass Creed was terrible too, but 2, Brohood, and Black Flag are all really good. Revelations and 3 weren't bad, but nothing to write home about either.

My favorite AC memory still is from Brotherhood, where my target ran into the Pantheon in Rome, and I assassinated his ass through the Oculus, like 150 feet straight down, breaking my fall on my target.

Realistic? Hell no. But one of the cooler gaming moments I've had in recent memory.

Edit: I really wish we'd see eastern AC games to change things up. Either that or bite the bullet and go full Noir/pulp fiction, and set things in late 20's LA or San Francisco. I'd avoid New York mainly because you'd basically be making a batman game. Ditch the hood for a fedora that's vaguely reminiscent of an eagle's beak and the overcoat for something more time appropriate. Hire some really top notch dialog people that can channel Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. Hell that'd be the perfect game for a femme fatale protagonist.

I have about 20 rather successful kickstarters under my belt, but then again I mainly have kickstarted board games. Usually by that point the mechanics are done or just about done and all that is needed is tweaking or balancing/polishing.

The only two software kickstarters I have backed are Star Citizen/Squadron 42 and Shadowrun Returns.

Technically I've recently backed the Twilight Struggle playdeck game, but in reality I dropped the 120 bucks I did on the extremely limited edition of TS that GMT is putting out.